On Friday there will be an unprecedented and "extraordinary" meeting of the House of Laity of General Synod. This meeting has been called to vote on a no-confidence motion in its chairman, Dr Philip Giddings. It is estimated that the gathering will cost 38,000. (GBP)

This is part of the fallout of the result of the vote on Women Bishops on November 20th....
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Tom Sutcliffe, who is a well known liberal Anglican layman, further argues that:

The basis of the no confidence motion is that Giddings spoke against the Measure and voted against it . Stephen Barney seems to believe Philip should have tugged his forelock at the about-to-be Archbishop Welby whose speech supporting the Measure his immediately followed. Barney's motion (which amounts to a demand for self-censorship by the chair of the laity, and will destroy the value of having a chair of laity if it succeeds since all future chairs would have constantly to look over their shoulders and curtail their independence of thought and action) is also fired by his objection that Giddings making a good speech may have influenced how people voted. Would Barney have minded less if the speech had been bad? What nonsense! The basis of his intended censure of Giddings (and all of us who voted like him) is that we should have been happy to be rubber stamps - since any alternative to rubber-stamping the house of bishops' near unanimity in favour of the Measure was bound to damage the church in the eyes of the British electorate.